Chapter 2122: The Head, The Staff, and The Sword

As he spoke, a low, hoarse roar emerged from the viscous darkness shrouding this lightless street, but this time it was not a dragon's roar; it was a sound produced by a human throat, like a deathbed delirium.

Amelia had already summoned her Fate Ring, yet even the glowing ring could not illuminate very far. The elf girl, having summoned her courage, had decided to help this time; of course, her left hand still tightly gripped Luvia's hand.

Xia De turned east following the sound, looking toward the direction where the street extended into the distance, then slightly raised his head to gaze at the high sky, just meeting Mr. Goodman's eyes.

Those eyes were larger than Xia De himself, and as the thing hidden in the dark sky revealed its full form, all three saw Mr. Goodman's massive head slowly descend from the dark sky. Even as Xia De raised his long sword high to illuminate a larger area, they saw that it was clearly a giant-like figure crawling on the street like a reptile, its two arms respectively bracing the high buildings on both sides of the street, while its head opened its mouth and gradually approached the ground.

Looking more closely, that was not a human body at all; rather, Mr. Goodman's head was directly connected to two thick arms.

And within that open mouth, countless blood-red bodies of normal-sized Mrs. Goodman, boys, girls, and small puppies were connected to the upper, lower, left, and right sides of the oral cavity, all waving at the three people on the dark street:

"Would you like to come to my house for a visit?"

The chaotic resonance of the voices produced a seductive power; Amelia strongly resisted using her own spiritual power, then discovered that not only had Xia De and Luvia not summoned their Fate Rings, but their expressions had not even changed.

"I am too weak..."

At the same time, the massive tongue at the top of the giant head's open mouth, shaped like Mrs. Goodman, shot out. The sound of it breaking the air was exceptionally sharp; after colliding with the incoming thunder spear, arcs of electricity bounced off its surface, and it continued toward the ground with undiminished momentum, thrusting downward.

Luvia pulled Amelia backward quickly, and together they watched as Xia De's figure vanished from the spot and reappeared above the tongue. In his empty left hand, the black key transformed into a sphere of light, was held, and finally became a long staff; as his body fell due to gravity, silver-white thunder spread across the staff's surface, and after Xia De fell onto that giant tongue, he thrust it downward with one hand.

The silver-white thunder successfully pierced the tongue, which was covered in viscous green-black coating, and pinned it firmly to the ground.

Stepping on that temporarily unable-to-escape, soft tongue, he ran toward the giant head hovering above the street. But after only rushing forward three or four steps, as he brought his raised hands together before his chest, his entire body transformed into a huge moonlight oblique cross, slashing down along that tongue toward the skull:

"Moonlight Slash!"

"Oh!"

The giant groan from Mr. Goodman's head caused Amelia to feel tinnitus; after the moonlight struck the head, a terrifying oblique cross-shaped wound appeared on the lower half of the face, yet this wound did not even reach the bone.

The oblique cross transformed back into Xia De; Mian Se Ning Zhong, Xia De used "Laglai's Leap" to return to the two girls' side, reached out to catch the black long staff flying toward the sky as the tongue retracted into the mouth, and then handed it to Luvia.

Luvia did not even need to ask to know Xia De's meaning; with a slight wave of her right hand, the pure water she summoned formed a water sphere in front of her, temporarily replacing the function of the crystal ball. Holding the 【Yggdrasil Staff】, she touched the water sphere; as purple light flickered in her eyes, the divination achieved tremendous success:

"To destroy that door in this illusory Dark World, only then can it be expelled once more."

"I will hold this thing off; Luvia, leave finding the door to you."

As Xia De spoke, holding his sword, he charged again toward that giant skull, which had a hole pierced through its tongue and whose facial wounds were still healing. Red butterflies scattered across the sky, and countless illusion-crafted figures covered their retreat; Luvia wasted no time, swung the 【Yggdrasil Staff】 once to bestow a blessing of luck upon herself, then pulled Amelia back into the darkness toward the Three Cats Inn, standing like a haunted house.

The elf girl followed behind Luvia only after realizing it, softly chanting to bestow the blessings of "False Life" and "Elf Wind" upon the two of them, then looked with confusion at the weapon in her hand. The acquisition of the 【Yggdrasil Key】 occurred after the Battle of the Randel Valley, so Amelia had not seen it before.

And now, looking at that black wooden long staff, she somehow felt that she... wanted to cry.

The internal environment of the Three Cats Inn in the darkness was completely different from the environment Amelia knew. If she were to enter such a maze-like place on her own, she feared she would never find her way out. But now, holding Luvia's hand, she simply followed the diviner, who held the long staff and whose eyes seemed to be glowing, constantly moving forward.

Going up and down the stairs repeatedly, occasionally rushing into rooms she had never entered before. Amelia had not even had time to observe the terrifying interior of the inn, which was covered in various human faces and constantly had arms trying to grab her, before they had already reached the inn's highest floor.

The real inn's third floor had two rows of rooms on the left and right, but here there was only one door.

"Be careful, stay close to me."

Luvia's voice entered her ears; Amelia nodded lightly, carefully observing the surrounding environment. She felt that only since arriving in Tobesk had she truly witnessed the real lives of the Ring Mages; the days at the academy now seemed far too ordinary.

Because there were doors on only one side at this moment, the windows on one side of the corridor, though impassable, allowed one to see outside. At this time, the battle between Xia De and that giant skull was still continuing; tongues splitting into three shot out from the mouth of the head, obstructing Xia De's attacks, while among the four arms connected below the head, two tightly gripped the tops of the buildings on both sides of the street, allowing the head to move freely in the air, while the other two constantly smashed the street and the ground; at this moment, one-third of the street outside had already become ruins.

This head in front was not the true form of the 【Friendly Neighbor】; even though Xia De had just risked consuming a large amount of Spirit to use the "Black Moon Sigil," it only annihilated the right arm below the head, but soon the power of the Relic formed three brand new arms, changing from two arms to the current four arms.

This was not the normal world, so Xia De also summoned his Fate Ring. When Amelia saw that seven-ringed Fate Ring, she, like other female mages, felt it was astonishingly large.

A huge fist smashed Xia De in the air toward the ground, but only struck the scattering swarm of butterflies; subsequently, it was instead shackled by black chains flying out from within the butterfly swarm. A silver cat ran agilely along the shackled arm, leaped high, and resumed human form; the long sword in its hand slashed down, directly cutting off half an arm from below the head.

The wail was so sharp that cracks appeared in the glass; one arm was severed, and three more arms grew from below the head; at the same time, from that even wider-opened mouth, densely packed tongues like tentacles shot out one after another.

"Heh~"

Xia De swung the black chain in his hand, driving the severed arm wrapped by the chain toward those tongues. Thus, the densely packed tongues coiled around the severed arm, dragging it along with the 【Great Sin Chains】 into the mouth.

The blood splashing from the mouth chewing the severed arm seemed about to flood half the street, but then it was forced to open its mouth wide again; the tonsils, held by the 【Great Sin Chains】, were forcibly pulled out from the mouth.

On the street below, Xia De's figure was so clear and bright; Amelia watched the battle scene so intently that she did not even notice Luvia was nervously and quickly using the 【Yggdrasil Staff】 to tap the ground and carve runes.

Xia De had tied down most of the 【Friendly Neighbor】's power, so the obstacles Luvia encountered were not very great; moreover, she held an Angel-class weapon in her hand. In the gaps between carving runes, Luvia also followed Amelia's gaze to look out the window, watching Xia De dodge and weave while battling that giant head, watching him get knocked away by accident, and then quickly return to the battlefield in various wonderful ways.

"Is this what your daily life is usually like?"

She heard Amelia's soft question; the elf girl's eyes had never left the glowing man on the street outside the window:

"This is really very different from us students living in the school. Although I have left the school before, the Randel Valley was not yet very dangerous back then. So, this is what a Ring Ringed Ringed Shushi is like..."

"You probably misunderstood; this time is an exception."

Luvia, busy with her hands, immediately corrected:

"Don't overthink it; for the next two or three days, you will stay at his house, and then you will understand. Actually, our daily lives are mostly very peaceful. Come help; I need to carve a rune array. In a moment, we will directly break this thing. Do you understand..."

She stopped speaking and, together with Amelia, leaned toward the window. They saw that the giant skull, supported by dozens of arms like pillars, had risen to a higher altitude; in the darkness, some viscous thing surged toward that mouth, which was split open to an unimaginable angle. Subsequently, Mrs. Goodman, whose body was covered in black slime and resembled a dried corpse, crawled out from that mouth.

Her height at this moment was twice that of Xia De; and compared to her plump figure when alive, in this state her body was emaciated, with green-black skin covered in wrinkles. In her hand, she held a large human-bone sword that looked like two children's corpses pieced together; opening her mouth to emit a sharp, piercing "Ah~" sound, the human-bone sword in her hand, swirling with that dark viscous energy, slashed down from the high sky toward Xia De, who was panting on the ground.

This strike was stronger than any previous strike; the entire dark urban world seemed to be stirred up by this blow. And Xia De on the ground looked up at the black arc of light slashed by the human-bone sword, which was larger than his own body; a look of joy appeared on his face as he calculated the timing, threw out a frog leg, and then leaped violently into the high sky:

"Finally, it gave me a chance!"

With both hands raised high, holding the long sword with dragon-scale patterns, he met that deadly arc of light in the air. On the Fate Ring behind him, the core Spirit Rune 【Time and Space】 flickered with a gentle light like the moon in the night. The colors of the starry sky appeared in the dark world; Luvia and Amelia at the window watched as Xia De leaped into the high sky, the long sword in his hand contacting that black arc of light at just the right moment; at the same time, using the force of his waist turning during the jump, he spun the sword in the air:

"Adele's Principle of Return!"

The black arc of light seemed to be firmly attracted by the long sword; the long sword spun in the air, actually forming a dark swirl. And at the moment this swirl ended, a huge dark sword mark was slashed forward again by Xia De. The darkness of the dark color was not as deep as this Dark World, but the dark color seemed to be mixed with specks of starlight, making this sword mark not only not terrifying like the Dark World, but in Amelia's eyes, extraordinarily charming.